Two years ago I wrote a bit about my beginning in the board repair industry. You can read all about that here. It’s not a thrilling read by any means but I know it has helped a few people out over the years, so I figured it’s time for an update. I am proud to say that I have repaired hundreds of boards and thus have saved people a LOT of money. Repairs that would have costed people up to…
One day, your Mac will stop working or experience some kind of issue. This may happen suddenly without warning and when it does, you want a recovery and diagnostics drive handy. This drive has to be external and must match the interface your Mac(s) offer. For example a FireWire (FW) drive is not going to do you any good for a MacBook Air. A PPC will not allow you to boot from an external USB drive (even on the G5…
This question pops up every other week in the various facebook groups and forums I’m in. And I cringe every time I see it pop up. Why? because the comments are abundant and are typically full of misinformation. I can write a 10 page article about this but I will try to keep it brief. Here are a few of my issues with common comments: 1. Product recommendations “I use ClamXav”, “Avast has never let me down!” “McAffee is the…
If you want to give a Mac a good stress test to see if the core components are up to snuff, Prime95 is (one of) the ways to go. It includes something called the “Torture Test” and it is as brutal as it sounds. Core 2 Duo or Xeon, Prime95 will put it to work like nothing else. It’s not just the CPU that’s tested, it’s the L1/L2/L3 caches, north bridge, RAM and all that connects those components together. Letting…
This is the first in a series called “Tools I use”. The idea is to cover a different tool every week or whenever time allows or the mood strikes. Some of these tools you may know, others you may not. I do not use affiliate links and do not get kick backs from any of the developers I mention in this series so you can be sure that any mention and recommendation I make is based on good first hand…
If you are not familiar with these terms, here’s a little history. History F.lux is an application that I’ve been using for as long as I can remember. I want to say 2005/2006 maybe when I started using it, an early iteration of it or an app that did something similar. The earliest reference I can find is from 2009 but I am confident I was using this (or something like it) long before that. Basically it filters out blue…
A few things have bothered me about the reasons for recommending the Pixlas Mod. 1. The mini 6-pin connector can only provide up to 75W of power. 2. The traces in the Mac Pro’s logic board are too thin to have more power demanded than 75W. I needed definitive proof (at least definitive for me) of these two claims so I decided to really dive into this. I’ve gathered all the relevant information and put the puzzle pieces together, along…
Years ago in 2013 I wrote about this awesome little Mac Pro dust filter called the iSchmutz. Unfortunately a few months after that Trans Intl. stopped selling them and I have been sending them emails for years asking if they have old stock, when it would be back in stock etc. The last reply I got was early 2018 saying they’d be in stock soon but as I had heard that a few times before, I was not holding my…
Apple today announced the new Mac Pro. The entire keynote was a snoozefest for me as all I gave a damn about was to hear the new Mac pro being announced. One hour and 20 minutes in… finally! The new Mac Pro! Is it hideous? Meh, kinda. Were some compromises made? Yeah. Is it a worthy successor of our beloved Classic Mac Pro’s? Absolutely. Let’s take a quick look at how the new Mac Pro is everything Apple promised and…
Louis Rossmann released a video where he covers the MacBooks he recommends and those he doesn’t. The video is fast paced and I don’t expect anyone that isn’t well versed in logic board numbers or model information in general to keep up. You can watch the video several times, pause and rewind while you lookup the info and take notes but I figured I’d help you out a little here. It’s noon at the time of writing, he released his…